The Blogs Shall Inherit The Earth

Originally uploaded by ehoyer

Bloggers are genii.  Or, at least, bloggers are generally closer to genius than those who take to firing pot-shots at them.  The reason is simple. Genius isn’t something that is plucked out of the ether, it’s something you wipe from your brow.

In Saturday’s Guardian, Malcolm Gladwell looked deeply into the concept of ‘innate’ genius and found it wanting. Genius isn’t born, it is learnt, he said.
Drawing from a study on virtuoso violinists by psychologist K Anders Ericsson, Gladwell came to a conclusion that reads glumly for anyone who is waiting for their inner light to spontaneously shine through. It ain’t about flicking a switch, it’s about generating electricity.

For those with talent, the difference between the good and the great is firstly opportunity, but more importantly, effort.
“The curious thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any “naturals” – musicians who could float effortlessly to the top while practising a fraction of the time that their peers did.”
Gladwell continues: “Their research suggested that once you have enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. What’s more, the people at the very top don’t just work much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.”

All of which is good news for bloggers.

The ‘magic number’, is apparently 10,000. The path from mediocrity to genius or true expertise, at least, takes generally ten years – enough time to put in 10,000 hours of practice in your chosen field.
It takes compulsivity that borders on obsession, which is a concept that the most prolific bloggers can surely relate to. Those who feel that an event that hasn’t been live-blogged is an event that didn’t happen, those that twitch when Twitter is down, anyone who takes their laptop to bed – they are poised to inherit the new world of  communications.
Many questioned whether or not compulsive blogging would ever bear fruit for its practitioners, but now is the time for them to keep their eyes peeled. Blogs are ripe for the picking.

According to Wikipedia, the blog as we know it began for real in 1994, giving consistent bloggers 14 years to hone their craft. And what is that craft? It’s basic communication, complemented by technology. Bloggers have spent the last decade formulating opinion, backing them up with links, embedded video, facts drawn from comments. They have spent more than ten years communicating directly with customers, readers, commenters and the blogosphere at large.
They write with a fervour, typically, develop a personal or professional style, learn technical skills and spread their output across several media. And they do it at a frenetic rate, blogging everything, describing, unearthing, reporting and just being creative.
And this is why, more than a decade into the phenomenon, bloggers are now getting book deals, being snapped up by newspapers, campaigning loudly, founding communications companies, and seeing their business profiles shoot through the roof.
It’s also why those who hurriedly jump on the blogwagon stumble and fall – what works and what doesn’t work online is nuanced, so that a slapdash, hasty approach is doomed to irk the online world and look like homework done on the Monday morning train to school.
There’s plenty of Johnny-come-latelys, jumping on an increasingly lucrative bandwagon. I’m one, just four years into my blogging, but I’ve been writing professionally since 1997, so it’s slightly different, I’d argue.

Other stumble-in efforts have met with failure and derision. The inhabitants of the blogosphere, the experts, the genii, will shine through, and are perfectly placed to take advantage and move their careers into a new phase. The opportunity has been gifted to them, it’s now up to them what is done with it.

Update: Gladwell will be speaking in UCD next week – via Jim. Also, expect a glut of panicky late-adopters to the blog scene via Typepad’s journo-saving bailout plan, in light of the likes of this.